Web design stuff, a few questions.

I did a load of web design stuff as part of my HNC but that finished in 2003 and I haven't really done much since. I was fairly good at using Dreamweaver and HTML (from scratch) and touched on XML and CSS, but the other day I was just thinking about how much I've forgotten and how I have no idea even what software people use these days, and thought it might be nice to have a bit of a brush up. None of it is job related, it's just interest, but I might build Rutty a site for his photography at some point.

So a few questions:

Do people still use Dreamweaver, or has anything else cornered that market?

What about XML and/or CSS - should I brush up on these and learn a bit more, or is there some sort of Dreamweaver type thing that does it all for you now?

I never learned anything about PHP or ASP or anything like that. Worth bothering with for the occasional tinkerer?

Any good books you might recommend? Something about Photoshop for web design might be nice too.

I never used Dreamweaver - I have a radar for shit, bloated software that doesn't work... which explains why I don't use Windows as well

Spanky is spot on about CSS though - its all about separation of concerns. HTML Markup should contain the data you want to display, the CSS should be used to present that data in a way that makes you happy. You can even make several sets of CSS and swap between them for different looks, which is rather nice.

I would also recommend VIM for file editing. A lot of editors will provide code completion for you which, though nice at first when learning, makes you a sloppy developer who relies upon his tools and can't do a thing without them. VIM, at its most basic, does none of that and relies upon you knowing what you are doing. Real men use VIM.

I remember trying to make tables go where I wanted them to go in HTML and usually failing miserably (It took me four attempts to type miserably correctly btw.)

OK so any good CSS books?

I tried to borrow a couple from my uni library yesterday, got to the counter and the woman looked at me disgustedly and said "you can't borrow those they're reference only". Oh, soh-ree. And they're all ancient anyway.

You can't know everything. But knowing when to use the different tech and their basic structure is always a nice place to start. I have a brain like a sieve so I use [link=http://devguru.com/">devguru.com so much I should be sending them a monthly payment and

I learnt most of the basics (and a small amount of some more advanced stuff) from w3schools.com. It's a good site with free tutorials that will teach you all you need to know.

If you're really serious about web developing, you'll want to learn XHTML, CSS, Javacsript. And then possibly ASP or PHP (I prefer ASP) or even ASP.NET (requires some expensive kit). SQL knowledge is also good.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but using a combination of XHTML, CSS, Javascript and ASP I can make some pretty nifty stuff. Unfortunately some of the best stuff I've done is on the intranet at work so I can't show it off.

I might be on my own here but I prefer Fireworks to Photoshop in every single way.

Being able to design a page in FW, then send it to DW to code on, then back to FW to tweak again and so on is a god send.

As Spanky said though, learning to hand code is the way forward. I do use Dreamweaver but only because I've got used to how it colour codes my PHP code. The handy built-in FTP/file uploader is useful too.

Thanks DB and everyone. I've been looking at w3.org, it's a mine of information. I'll have to crack out text editor and have a go, see what I can remember. The only html I use these days is for making linkies on EG